October 4, 2016 | No Comments
WAYNE, N.J. — Gov. Chris Christie largely stuck to his script for school funding and education reform during a town hall in Wayne on Tuesday, making no direct mention of the latest developments in the Bridgegate trial, even after a woman in the audience held up a sign that read “GWB / Abuse of Power” on one side and “Resign” on the other.
Diane Douthat, a teacher in Wayne, challenged Christie on his school-funding proposal, accusing him of throwing thousands of urban children “under the bus” for suggesting that the state give equal funding to all students.
“What kind of a leader pits people against each other?” she asked.
As Christie began to answer some of her questions, she held up her banner, drawing boos from audience members.
Christie quickly quieted the crowd.
“Everybody, please. Don’t boo. … She has every right to express her views. But I will tell you this. I’m glad she did. Because now we know that she doesn’t give a damn about those kids. She’s just here to gang up after me,” he said, to applause.
Earlier in the day, the government’s star witness in the Bridgegate trial, former Port Authority executive David Wildstein, testified that he was told that Christie and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo discussed a possible cover-up story about the George Washington Bridge lane closures.
A Cuomo spokesman has denied Wildstein’s account.
Christie, currently serving as a top adviser to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, has denied any knowledge of or involvement in the lane closures as they were occurring, despite earlier testimony by Wildstein that the governor was told of the traffic gridlock in Fort Lee on the third day of the closings.
The governor confined his remarks to a pitch for what he calls his “Fairness Formula” and an attack on the teachers union.
Christie has proposed giving equal aid to all students, with the exception of special-education pupils, who would receive more. He has argued that redistributing aid would lower property taxes in many of the state’s municipalities while forcing struggling school districts to rethink how they operate.
Democrats in the Legislature have put forward their own proposal to tweak the existing funding formula while continuing to allocate more funds to poor students, English learners, and those in special education. They’ve also proposed increasing state aid by half a billion dollars over five years.
Neither proposal is likely to be enacted, at least not while Christie remains in office. He is not eligible to run for re-election next year.
Nevertheless, Christie has been traversing the state to market his plan. On Tuesday, he launched into his usual praise of charter schools for providing longer school days and years and lashed out at the New Jersey Education Association, criticizing the union’s work rules and longevity rules which he said prevents ineffective teachers with seniority from being fired.
Donna Persh, a retired educator, told Christie that without union job protection, she might have been laid off because she was on the higher end of the salary guide.
“If we didn’t have a union, trust me, Governor Christie, we teachers — teachers who are teaching today — would be sweeping the floors, stoking coal into the furnaces as we did many years ago. There would be no protection for us at all. I think you need to think about a little respect for teachers,” she said.
Christie responded that he’s a product of New Jersey’s public school system and said his issue is not with individual teachers but the union.
“You never heard me say I want to eliminate the union,” Christie said. “What I said was I want a union that’s as good as the teachers.”